26 October 2009 :

the four defendants accused of killing the US diplomat Michael Granville and his Sudanese driver Abd-al-Rahman Abbas appealed their death sentences in a court in Khartoum, Sudan. In their petition, lawyers insisted that their clients were innocent and that their judicial confessions were elicited under duress and torture.
Akhbar al-Yawm notes that it had previously learned from the defendants that they had relieved the defense team from representing them during trials. It is also worth mentioning that the defendants had been sentenced to death by the Khartoum North Criminal Court.